BOOYAH BABY!!! What’s THIS?!?!
That’s liquid soap!! I ROCK!!
And yes, I’m quite pleased with myself about it all too. 
After multiple recipe tweaking, and various method attempts, I finally found myself with bottles of beautiful, golden, liquid soap. Giddy didn’t even begin to describe my level of excitement when I realised it had worked. Glycerine is a beautiful, beautiful thing!
The only thing the above soap isn’t, is goat’s milk. After five failed batches, I decided to go with a basic, out of the book, non goat’s milk recipe. Just to see if it was in fact me that was the problem. Turns out, it wasn’t! (We so knew that already) Woo Hoo!
So, I made what’s called a ‘bastile’ liquid soap. When a soap is nothing but olive oil and the lye to make it soap, it’s called castile. Bastile is the bastard child version of mostly olive oil with a bit of coconut, and in this case, castor oil. Just for the bubble factor.
Apparently the soap gods were very pleased with my efforts as the batch has the most intoxicating, seducingly sweet smell, ever! At first I thought I must have been smelling something in the air, but after continuously trying to snort my own hand, I realised it was the soap I was smelling. Lemony…? Sort of. Sweet…? For sure. But I couldn’t pin point it. The closest I came to nailing it down to something familiar was the jam found inside hot jam donuts purchased at markets on a Sunday.
What ever it was – it was AWESOME! Especially for a soap with no fragrance added! For someone trying to lose weight, I’m amazed I didn’t try and eat my own hand!
All in all, this soap was a massive success to me. And just the confidence boost I desperately needed to keep trying!
Rinsing off the slow cooker bowl. This is like winning the lotto when making liquid soap – clearly bubble factor was good!!
The little pots of gold!!
Probably not as clear as other liquid soap makers, but I chose a method that is more concerned with the end result benefits than the clarity. For a clearer soap you actually OVERDOSE your lye on purpose, then neutralise it back out and such. I’d rather the ‘less is more and leaves excess fatty acids” method. My skin certainly isn’t complaining about the additional ‘cloudy’ nourishing.
I was trying to work out how to show the thickness of the soap. I didn’t use any additive thickeners with my recipe, and it came out the most wonderfully gel like consistency. A considered downside to home made liquid soap is the water like consistency the end result produces. Some embrace this and use the ‘foamer’ pump bottles, and others add thickeners to bring it more into a commercial like thickness. I am happy that I didn’t have to do either and with a close eye on my cooking method, was able to produce a feel most people will expect from a liquid soap. Yay me!
Once I started getting it poured into some bottles – BIG mess maker – I could see that the soap was in fact quite clear considering I made no attempts at making it crystal clear. Yay me again!!
First official test…. eeeeeek!
Trying to show that it didn’t just all wash off my hand and instead more ‘goo-eed’ it’s way off. Nice and thick!
YAY!! BUBBLES!!!
I was intent at trying to capture the thickness as I was AM so proud of it. After purchasing a bottle of maple syrup for the pancakes today, I realised it’s about the same consistency. Awesomely wicked!
Thought this picture was just too cool! This is after stirring it with the fork. You can see the bubbles suspended in a very cool pattern.
And that’s, my first successful batch of liquid soap!! Took me one… two… *counts on fingers*… four… FIVE days of batch, after batch, after batch to finally succeed. Each batch taught me more and more though, so nothing was a failure. Everything I was reading that made my head spin before, finally switched on like a lightbulb and just made sense, and that alone is invaluable!
Now I understand the process, it’s a matter of honing my own recipe and technique to result with something I am truly happy with. The first bottle of this (and the following goat’s milk batch that succeeded) are already with my number one tester, with more in line to receive over the next few days. Can’t wait to hear the feedback – especially with the donut jam like scent of this batch. Man it’s so yummy!!
ShareBOOYAH BABY!!! What’s THIS?!?! That’s liquid soap!! I ROCK!! And yes, I’m quite pleased with myself about it all too. After multiple recipe tweaking, and various method attempts, I finally found myself with bottles of beautiful, golden, liquid soap. Giddy didn’t even begin to describe my level of excitement when I realised it had worked….
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See how good it looks? So smooth. So creamy. So spot free!
Thankfully it was such a small batch. The only thing it gets to clean now is the inside of my rubbish bin.
Apart from looking like an aging rendered wall, the soaps are fantastic!
They aren’t Lye. The soap doesn’t ‘zap’. From speaking to others in the soaping community, I have come to the belief they are stearic acid – normally a bi-product of oils that aren’t heated enough and solidify before soaponifying with the rest of the soap.
